Christians need to overcome their own feelings of embarrassment, shame and disgust about homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury has insisted.

Dr Rowan Williams acknowledged that the Church was still “scratching its head” about where it stands on issues like same-sex marriage despite its vocal public opposition to the Government’s plan to legalise it.

In his most frank public comments to date on the subject, the Archbishop accepted that the Church was in a “tangle” over homosexuality.

Christians need to overcome their own feelings of embarrassment, shame and disgust about homosexuality

Well, I question the straw man Williams once again sets up in order to advance his argument. I have not come across anyone in the Church of England who expresses such views expressly or implicitly. No doubt Williams likes to adopt a holier than thou approach to everyone else in the church, but such a malign view of members of the Church of England needs to be challenged.

Dr Rowan Williams acknowledged that the Church was still “scratching its head” about where it stands on issues like same-sex marriage

No, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion have always spoken quite clearly that the only place for sex is within a marriage between a man and a woman. It is only Williams [and a few other bearded twits] who are scratching their head, which is why Williams’ hair is such a mess.

He is clearly going to continue to malign and mouth off whether it is in mischaracterising the efforts of a government trying to stop us going the way of Greece, or the views of the ordinary person in church until the wretched man’s retirement - which can’t come too soon.

I “feel” that the ABC has been a total failure in each and everyone of the areas mentioned because he has sought to bring a Hegelian dialectic to the matters already decided by the Creator, revealed in Holy Writ, and affirmed by the Church Militant. I have data to back up my “feelings” too.

O what a tangled web we weave … .

Of course, my “feelings” are part of the body’s grace so they are equal in authority to those of the ABC. And, for that matter, His Grace should realize that such feelings are equally valid across the spectrum of responses and have equal validity in overturning the Creator’s design, Holy Writ, and the Tradition of the Church Militant - NONE.

I would agree with the word used by PM. I felt maligned when I read this in the morning newspaper at breakfast. To oppose gay marriage is not the same as disgust - and to say so is to play right into the hands of those who are critics of the churches’ stance. More than sad, it is deeply troubling and shows so little appreciation of what Christians have to endure. One example: a newly married couple took a 500,000 signature petition to the Prime Minister opposing gay marriage. It was a photo opportunity, and they were named. Since then they have had a hate campaign against them, saying things like ‘I hope you get cancer’ and ‘May you never have children’.

What is shameful and embarrassing is not so much homosexual relationships as it is that the like of Rowan Williams, KJS, and Gene Robinson can rise to pinnacles of leadership in the church at all. In an earlier era—not so long ago—not one of them would even have made it past the secretary’s cut of candidates for bishop.

#3 and #7 Yes, I think that is right. I don’t often read it, but there is a pertinent Editorial by Gerald Bray in this week’s Churchman about Williams: ‘A double minded man’. Here is one by Nick Baines defending him over his most recent comments about the government. But the truth of the matter is that Williams seems to regard his platform as a place for airing his private musings and what passes for his thoughts. He takes no regard for what he should be saying on our behalf in the church. It means that no one takes a blind bit of notice of what he says, so intemperate has it become, and in consequence, when we as a church have something important to say, we get tarred with the same brush.

The real issue is a man who spends his time writing books for his retirement rather than concentrating on the job we pay him for. He has a prodigious capacity for work, but is not only double minded, he is incapable of sustained effort on one subject and hopelessly incapable of acting consensually with the other Anglican Primates, for all that he spouts about indaba, continuing conversation, and talking.

His 1996 vision The Challenge and Hope of Being and Anglican Today offered a cogent defense of Anglicanism and a routemap towards a covenant which I bought into. But before long and particularly after 2008 when a broke ACO started being funded by massive funding from TEC related third parties as part of the push to rehabilitate TEC and its theology into the Communion, he lost his independence, and his increasingly manipulative and dishonest scheming has led the current impasse when he, and by virtue of his actions, the Church of England is marginalised and distrusted in the Communion.

The current unholy alliance between Affirming Catholics and Fulcrum members to stitch up the Anglo Catholics and Conservative Evangelicals is going to do nothing to re-establish that confidence.

I am not sure the damage Williams has done will then be reparable if the Synod meeting this time reflects the awful one a few years ago. All in all, a pretty bleak outlook from an Archbishop and House of Bishops which have noticeably deteriorated in the last 10 years when I used to be quite proud of them and the balanced and English approach we took to things and dealing with one another; a model in fact of leadership, but that is another world.

“...and the Church is scratching its head and trying to work out where it is on all that, and what to think about it.”

Oh, the Church knows exactly where it is; so do the Scriptures—you just don’t like it or don’t agree. None of this would be a problem if so many(like most people who write here) were not “repulsed homophobes”? This man is allegedly a brilliant theologian and he can’t do any better than that?!!

I’m sorry, Pageantmaster. I really thought people like him would have better sense than to drink TEC’s Kool-Aid. Instead, our focus, e.g., is the beautiful Truth you wrote on the Aaron Kimel thread.

Hello Bookworm [PfS] - thanks. The Truth is indeed beautiful and the words were Father Kimel’s.

I think one has to remember that Williams and Griswold founded Affirming Catholicism. Of course the Affirming part relates, not to the faith or catholicism, but to the TEC new thing as far as ethics and inclusion go; although even Williams is too bright to go for their infantile ‘theology’ as he demonstrated in his demolition of Spong’s ‘12 Theses’.